Valentine

A very large number of years ago, I ran into this nice girl giving out candy hearts in the dorm. We both got to talking, and talked some more, and pretty soon it was morning. And here we are.

We went last night and had a hell of a dinner at Number 9 Park, where we’d never been. Extravagant, yes, but on the whole less expensive than flying to Paris. Tons of fun, and of course plenty of notes taken for many future dinners.

I'll probably jot the whole menu here tomorrow, but here are some impressions:

• The tiny peekytoe crab cake was delicious, as you’d expect. It came with a little taste of cauliflower panna cotta, and that was a flavorful surprise. It's not clear to me how you do that, since I’d expect that any prolonged extraction of cauliflower into the cream would give you lots of sulfurous brassica flavors. Perhaps lightly cooked and then puréed?
• The seared cod was a revelation; I didn’t think you could do that with cod. The fish wasn’t quite as sweet as the memorable codfish at the Norwegian truckstop, but it was really, really good.
• Pickled oyster is tasty. A forgotten New England heritage,
• Looking out the window at 9 Park, it’s easy to imagine Caroline Healey Dall lobbing snowballs. Could Henry Adams have been one of her targets? Not quite: when she was 16, Henry was only 2.
• The wine pairing for the crab cake was a sparking wine, but we’d already been sipping prosecco waiting for our table. So the server made an executive decision and gave us a lovely Alsatian muscat instead. Nice.
• Barbara Lynch’s prune-filled gnocchi, topped with bits of seared foie gras and accompanied by a lovely malmsey, are every bit as good as the cognoscenti said,
• There was also a course of agnolotti filled with grilled leek. Right there, that’s the different between what a restaurant can do and what you can do. I figure someone had to grill those leeks mighty early in the day, in order to make the agnolotti, not to mention the sauce, the foam, and the garnishes. My, does it taste good.
• There was a very fine duck trio (breast, confit, sausage), but it was upstaged by an amazing pinot noir. I don’t recall ever having that feeling before.
• Despite the intricate prep and the many tiny plates, this is, at heart, just what you’d expect to have across the street from the State House: good local ingredients, solid home cooking with a little extra flair, crossed with a bit of Italian cooking.
• The cheeses included three goat cheese produced from the milk of three distinct goats. How cool is that?

All in all, something like 9 courses, 9 wines, and lots of inspiration.